Once again, it should be reiterated, that this does not pretend to be a very extensive history of what happened on this day (nor is it the most original - the links can be found down below). If you know something that I am missing, by all means, shoot me an email or leave a comment, and let me know!
Now, according to the History Channel's webpage (see link below), this was a very important date for William Shakespeare, although some of this is in dispute. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see his name keep popping up for this date in particular, and so I added the brief history provided by the website. Here is the link, and the text of the writing can also be found below:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
According to tradition, the great English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1564. It is impossible to be certain the exact day on which he was born, but church records show that he was baptized on April 26, and three days was a customary amount of time to wait before baptizing a newborn. Shakespeare's date of death is conclusively known, however: it was April 23, 1616. He was 52 years old and had retired to Stratford three years before.
Although few plays have been performed or analyzed as extensively as the 38 plays ascribed to William Shakespeare, there are few surviving details about the playwright's life. This dearth of biographical information is due primarily to his station in life; he was not a noble, but the son of John Shakespeare, a leather trader and the town bailiff. The events of William Shakespeare's early life can only be gleaned from official records, such as baptism and marriage records.
He probably attended the grammar school in Stratford, where he would have studied Latin and read classical literature. He did not go to university but at age 18 married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior and pregnant at the time of the marriage. Their first daughter, Susanna, was born six months later, and in 1585 William and Anne had twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died 11 years later, and Anne Shakespeare outlived her husband, dying in 1623. Nothing is known of the period between the birth of the twins and Shakespeare's emergence as a playwright in London in the early 1590s, but unfounded stories have him stealing deer, joining a group of traveling players, becoming a schoolteacher, or serving as a soldier in the Low Countries.
The first reference to Shakespeare as a London playwright came in 1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, wrote derogatorily of him on his deathbed. It is believed that Shakespeare had written the three parts of Henry VI by that point. In 1593, Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare's first published poem, and he dedicated it to the young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl of Southampton. In 1594, having probably composed, among other plays, Richard III, The Comedy of Errors, and The Taming of the Shrew, he became an actor and playwright for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which became the King's Men after James I's ascension in 1603. The company grew into England's finest, in no small part because of Shakespeare, who was its principal dramatist. It also had the finest actor of the day, Richard Burbage, and the best theater, the Globe, which was located on the Thames' south bank. Shakespeare stayed with the King's Men until his retirement and often acted in small parts.
By 1596, the company had performed the classic Shakespeare plays Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. That year, John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, a testament to his son's growing wealth and fame. In 1597, William Shakespeare bought a large house in Stratford. In 1599, after producing his great historical series, the first and second part of Henry IV and Henry V, he became a partner in the ownership of the Globe Theatre.
The beginning of the 17th century saw the performance of the first of his great tragedies, Hamlet. The next play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, was written at the request of Queen Elizabeth I, who wanted to see another play that included the popular character Falstaff. During the next decade, Shakespeare produced such masterpieces as Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. In 1609, his sonnets, probably written during the 1590s, were published. The 154 sonnets are marked by the recurring themes of the mutability of beauty and the transcendent power of love and art.
Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon on April 23, 1616. Today, nearly 400 years later, his plays are performed and read more often and in more nations than ever before. In a million words written over 20 years, he captured the full range of human emotions and conflicts with a precision that remains sharp today. As his great contemporary the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson said, "He was not of an age, but for all time."
215 BC - A temple is built on the Capitoline Hill dedicated to Venus Erycina to commemorate the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene.
1014 - King Brian Boru of Ireland beats Danes at Battle of Clontarf
1154 - Damascus surrenders to sultan Nur ad-Din van Aleppo
1229 - Ferdinand III of Castile conquers Cáceres.
1343 - St. George's Night Uprising.
1348 - The first English order of knighthood was founded. It was the Order of the Garter. 1500 - Pedro Cabal claimed Brazil for Portugal.
1500 - Pedro Cabral lands & annexes Brazil (Terra da Vera Cruz)
1501 - Portuguese navigator Pedro Cabral & 6 ships return to Lisbon
1504 - King Maximilian I routes troops to Bavaria .
1521 - The Comuneros were crushed by royalist troops in Spain.
1564- According to some, William Shakespeare is born (disputed)
1597 - William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor is first performed, with Queen Elizabeth I of England in attendance
1616 - William Shakespeare died in Stratford-on-Avon, England.
1621 - William Penn, English admiral (and the man for whom Pennsylvania was named) was born
1633 - Sweden and Protestant German monarchy form the Union of Heilbronn
1635 - Oldest US public institution, Boston Latin School founded
1660 - Treaty of Oliwa is established between Sweden and Poland.
1661 - English king Charles II crowned in London
1759 - The British seized Basse-Terre and Guadeloupe in the Antilies from France.
1789 - U.S. President George Washington moved into Franklin House, New York. It was the first executive mansion.
1789 - "Courier De Boston" was published for the first time. It was the first Roman Catholic magazine in the U.S.
1826 - Missolonghi fell to Egyptian forces.
1861 - Arkansas troops seized Fort Smith.
1872 - Charlotte E. Ray became the first black woman lawyer. 1895 - Russia, France, and Germany forced Japan to return the Liaodong peninsula to China.
1896 - The Vitascope system for projecting movies onto a screen was demonstrated in New York City.
1900 - The word "hillbilly" was first used in print in an article in the "New York Journal." It was spelled "Hill-Billie".
1908 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signed an act creating the U.S. Army Reserve.
1915 - The A.C.A. became the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA).
1920 - The Turkish Grand National Assembly had its first meeting in Ankara.
1921 - Charles Paddock set a record time in the 300-meter track event when he posted a time of 33.2 seconds.
1924 - The U.S. Senate passed the Soldiers Bonus Bill.
1940 - About 200 people died in a dance-hall fire in Natchez, MS.
1945 - The Soviet Army fought its way into Berlin.
1948 - Johnny Longden became the first race jockey to ride 3,000 career winners.
1950 - Chaing evacuated Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao and the communists. 1951 - The Associated Press began use of the new service of teletype setting.
1954 - Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit his first of 755 major-league home run on this day.
1964 - Ken Johnson of the Houston Astros threw the first no-hitter for a loss. The game was lost 1-0 to the Cincinnati Reds due to two errors.
1967 - The Soyuz 1 was launched by Russia. 1968 - The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church.
1969- Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death (later reduced to a life sentence) for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
1971 - The Soyuz 10 was launched.
1981 - The Soviet Union conducted an underground nuclear test at their Semipaltinsk (Kazakhstan) test site.
1982 - The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices declined the previous month (March). It was the first decline in almost 17 years.
1985 - The Coca-Cola Company announced that it was changing its 99-year-old secret formula. New Coke was not successful, which resulted in the resumption of selling the original version.
1985 - The U.S. House rejected $14 million in aid to Nicaragua.
1988 - A U.S. federal law took effect that banned smoking on flights that were under two hours.
1988 - In Martinez, CA, a drain valve was left open at the Shell Marsh. More than 10,000 barrels of oil poured into the marsh adjoining Peyton Slough.
1988 - Kanellos Kanelopoulos set three world records for human-powered flight when he stayed in the air for 74 miles and four hours in his pedal-powered "Daedalus".
1989 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played his last regular season game in the NBA.
1996 - A New York civil-court jury ordered Bernhard Goetz to pay $43 million to Darrell Cabey. Cabey was paralyzed when he was shot in subway car in 1984.
1996 - An auction of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' possessions began at Sotheby's in New York City.
1997 - An infertility doctor in California announced that a 63-year-old woman had given birth in late
1996. The child was from a donor egg. The woman is the oldest known woman to give birth.
1998 - James Earl Ray, convicted of assassinating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., died.
1999 - In Washington, DC, the heads of state and government of the 19 NATO nations celebrated the organization's 50th anniversary.
2003 - U.S. President George W. Bush signed legislation that authorized the design change of the 5-cent coin (nickel) for release in 2004. It was the first change to the coin in 65 years. The change, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, was planned to run for only two years before returning to the previous design.
2004 - U.S. President George W. Bush eased sanctions against Libya in return for Moammar Gadhafi's agreement to give up weapons of mass destruction.
2005 - The first video was uploaded to YouTube.com.
2009 - The iTunes Music Store reached 1 billion applications downloaded
Here are the websites that I used much of the information provided to complete this blog entry:
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory/April-23
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/apr23.htm
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/on-this-day/
http://www.historyorb.com/events/april/23
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